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What if Walt Disney was the producer of Looney Tunes/Walt Disney Animated Classics/Chicken Little
Chicken Little is a 2005 American 3D computer-animated science fiction comedy film, produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and loosely based on the original fable of the same name. The 82rd Disney animated feature film, it was directed by Mark Dindal from a screenplay by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, and Ron Anderson, based on a story by Mark Kennedy and Dindal. The film is dedicated to Disney artist and writer Joe Grant, who died before the film's release. Chicken Little was animated in-house at Walt Disney Feature Animation's main headquarters in Burbank, California and released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 4, 2005, in Disney Digital 3-D (the first film to be released in this format) along with the standard 2-D version. It is Disney's first fully computer animated feature film, as Pixar's films were distributed, but not produced by Disney. Chicken Little was Disney's second adaptation of the fable after a propaganda cartoon made during World War II. The film is also the last Disney animated film made before then-Pixar executive John Lasseter was named chief creative officer of Disney Animation and the last Disney film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation before the studio was renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios. Chicken Little grossed $314 million worldwide, making it Dindal's highest grossing film as of June 2018. Plot In the small town of Oakey Oaks, Chicken Little rings the school bell and warns everyone to run for their lives. This sends the whole town into a frenzied panic. Eventually, the Head of the Fire Department calms down enough to ask him what's going on, and he explains that a piece of the sky shaped like a stop sign had fallen on his head when he was sitting under the big oak tree in the town square; however, he is unable to find the piece. His father, Buck Cluck, assumes that this "piece of sky" was just an acorn that had fallen off the tree and had hit him on the head, making Chicken Little the laughingstock of the town. A year later, Chicken Little has become infamous in the town for being crazy. His only friends are outcasts like himself: Abby Mallard (who has a crush on him), Runt of the Litter (who is extremely large), and Fish Out of Water (who wears a helmet full of tap water). Trying to help, Abby encourages Chicken Little to talk to his father, but he really only wants to make his dad proud of him. As a result, he joins his school's baseball team in an attempt to recover his reputation and his father's pride, but is made last until the ninth inning of the last game. Chicken Little is reluctantly called to bat by the coach (even though the coach is certain that he will lose the game for them). Chicken Little is able to hit the ball and make it past first, second, and third bases, but is met at home plate by the outfielders. He tries sliding onto home plate but is touched by the ball. While it's presumed he lost the game, the umpire brushes away the dust to reveal Chicken Little's foot barely touching home plate, thus declaring Chicken Little safe and the game won; Chicken Little is hailed as a hero for winning the pennant. Later that night back at home, he is hit on the head by the same "piece of the sky" — only to find out that it is not a piece of the sky, but a device which blends into the background (which would thereby explain why Chicken Little was unable to find it last time). He calls his friends over to help figure out what it is. When Fish pushes a button on the back of the hexagon, it flies into the sky, taking Fish with it. It turns out to be part of the camouflage of an invisible UFO. Chicken Little manages to ring the bell to warn everyone, but the aliens see the crowds coming and manage to escape, leaving an orange alien child behind. No one believes the story of the alien invasion, and Chicken Little is ridiculed yet again... until the next day. He and his friends discover the orange alien, and a few minutes later a whole fleet of alien ships descend on the town and start what appears to be an invasion. The invasion is actually a misunderstanding, as the two aliens are looking for their lost child and attack only out of concern. As the aliens rampage throughout Oakey Oaks, vaporizing everything in their path, Chicken Little realizes he must return the alien to his parents to save the planet. First, though, he must confront his father and regain his trust. In the invasion, Buck, now regaining his pride and trust in his son, defends him from the aliens until they get vaporized. It is then discovered that the aliens weren't vaporizing people, the ray guns teleported them aboard the UFO. Afterwards, the aliens return everything to normal (except Foxy Loxy, whose brain got scrambled, turning her into a Southern Belle, and as a result, Runt falls for her), and everyone is grateful for Chicken Little's efforts to save the town. Cast * Zach Braff as Ace "Chicken Little" Cluck * Joan Cusack as Abby Mallard * Dan Molina as Fish Out of Water * Steve Zahn as Runt of the Litter * Amy Sedaris as Foxy Loxy * Mark Walton as Goosey Loosey * Garry Marshall as Buck Cluck * Don Knotts as Turkey Lurkey * Sean Elmore, Matthew Michael Joston, and Evan Dunn as Kirby * Fred Willard as Melvin * Catherine O'Hara as Tina * Mark Dindal as Morkubine Porcupine * Patrick Stewart as Mr. Woolensworth * Wallace Shawn as Principal Fetchit * Patrick Warburton as Alien Police * Adam West as Star-Ace Little * Harry Shearer as the Dog Announcer Production Writing In September 2001, director Mark Dindal developed the idea for Chicken Little, with its title character envisioned as an overreacting, doom and gloomy female chicken, that went to summer camp to build confidence so she wouldn't overreact, as well as repair her relationship with her father. At the summer camp, she would uncover a nefarious plot that her camp counselor, who was to be voiced by Penn Jillette, was planning against her hometown. Dindal would later pitch his idea to Michael Eisner who suggested it would be better to change Chicken Little into a male because as Dindal recalled, "if you're a boy and you're short, you get picked on." In January 2003, when David Stainton became Disney's new president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, he decided the story needed a different approach, and told the director the script had to be revised, and during the next three months, it was rewritten into a tale of a boy, trying to save his town from space aliens. During the rewriting process, Dindal, along with three credited writers and nine others, threw out twenty-five scenes to improve the character development and add more emotional resonance with the parent-child relationship. Dindal admitted that "It took us about 2½ years to pretty much get back to where we started... But in the course of that, the story got stronger, more emotional, and funnier, too." Casting When originally envisioned as a female character, Holly Hunter provided the voice for the title character for eight months, until it was decided for Chicken Little to be a male. Against forty actors competing for the title role, Zach Braff auditioned where Dindal noted he "pitched his voice slightly to sound like a junior high kid. Right there, that was really unique — and then he had such great energy." In April 2002, Variety reported that Sean Hayes was to voice a character named the Ugly Duckling, but the character was rewritten into a female. Now conceived as Abby Mallard, Hunter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jodie Foster, Geena Davis, and Madonna were considered, but Joan Cusack won the role for her natural comedy. In December 2003, it was announced Braff and Cusack were cast, along with other cast members including Steve Zahn, Amy Sedaris, Don Knotts, Katie Finneran, and Garry Marshall. Marshall was asked to provide a voice for Kingdom of the Sun, which was re-conceived into The Emperor's New Groove and directed by Dindal, but was removed from the project for being "too New York". When he was approached to provide the voice for Buck Cluck, Marshall claimed "I said I don't do voices. You want a chicken that talks like me, fine. So they hired me and they didn't fire me, and it was like a closure on animation." Animation To visualize this story, Disney selected 50 percent of its new CGI animation team from its 2D animation staff, and placed them through a rigorous eighteen-month training program, which included an introductory to Alias's Maya that would serve as the main 3D animation software used on the project. As some of the animators had worked on Rock-a-Doodle (1991), which mixed live-action and animation, the animation team took inspiration for its staging, coloring, and theatrical lighting from Mary Blair's background designs featured in Peter Pan (1953), and Alice in Wonderland (1951). For the aesthetics in the background designs, the background layout artists sparingly use digital matte paintings to render out the naturalistic elements, including the trees and the baseball diamond, but they were retouched using Adobe Photoshop as background cards featured in the film.18 The lighting department would utilize the "Lumiere" software to enhance virtual lighting for the shading form and depth and geometric rendering for the characters' shadows, as well as use real lighting to create cucaloris.18 For the characters' designs and animation style, Dindal sought to capture the "roundness" as seen in the Disney animated works from the 1940s to 1950s, by which the characters' fluidity of motion was inspired from the Merrie Melodies cartoon How to Play Baseball (1942). Under visual effects supervisor Steve Goldberg who spearheaded the department, the Maya software included the software program "Shelf Control" that provided an outline of characters that can be viewed on screen and provided a direct link to the controls for specific autonomy, as well as new electronic tablet screens were produced that allowed for the artists to draw digital sketches of the characters to rough out their movements, which was then transferred to the 3D characters. All of the characters were constructed using geometric polygons. For the title character, there was approximately fourteen to fifteen character designs before settling the design composed of an ovular egghead shape with oversized glasses. The final character was constructed of 5,600 polygons, 700 muscles, and more than 76,000 individual feathers, of which 55,000 are placed on his head. Following the casting of Braff, supervising animator Jason Ryan adapted Braff's facial features during recording sessions to better combine the dorkiness and adorability the filmmakers desired. "He's got this really appealing face and eye expressions," Ryan said, adding that he was amazed by Braff's natural vocal abilities. Next, the animators would utilize the software program "Chicken Wire", where digital wire deformers were provided for the animators to manipulate the basic geometric shapes to get their desired facial features. Lastly, a software development team constructed XGen, a computer software program for texturing the hair, cloth, feathers, and leaves. Music Reception Home media Trivia